e, and without thought
or even consciousness of what she was doing, she struck him full in the
face.

Instead of recoiling, he caught and pinned her arms in a grip like a
vice. "Ah, ha, so that is the mettle you are made of, is it, you little
fiend! Don't think that I mind your fury--you will be a wife after my
own heart when I have tamed you! I am a man of my word--I said I would
marry you, and I will! Not many men would want to marry a woman of your
temper, but you suit me!"

In her horror Nina felt her throat grow dry. She stared at the thick,
red, cruel, animal lips of the man with a loathing that almost paralyzed
her power to move; while his hands pressed numbingly into the flesh of
her arms.

"Let me go! Do you hear"--her voice shook with fright and rage--"let me
go! At once! You coward! You beast!"

And like a beast he snarled his answer: "Scream all you please! You
could not be heard if you had a throat of brass!" Then mockingly he
sneered, "Come, won't you dance with me, as you did with the pretty
Giovanni? You had his arms around you lovingly enough! But, by Bacchus!
the way to win a woman is to seize her, after the good old customs of
our ancestors!" And with that he drew her close to him--so close that,
though she screamed and struggled like a fury, his lips drew
nearer--nearer----

Then a jar struck through her blinding rage; in a daze she felt herself
released, and realized that Giovanni had appeared; that he had gripped
Scorpa around the throat until his eyes started out of their sockets;
and then sent him sprawling to the floor.

With the relief and reaction, everything seemed to recede from Nina and
grow black. Dimly she felt that Giovanni had put his arm around her to
support her. "Come quickly, Mademoiselle, before there is a scene"--she
heard his voice as though it were far off. But she was perfectly
conscious. She knew that Scorpa still lay on the floor as Giovanni
hurried her through another set of rooms and led her down a staircase
that brought them to a second entrance door--one by which, as it
happened, Giovanni had come in. The footman on duty looked as though he
were going to bar their egress, but Giovanni ordered him to open the
door quickly. "The lady is fainting," he said, and a glance at Nina's
face too well confirmed it. Besides, the man would hardly have dared
disobey a Sansevero. Once in the open air, they lost no time in going
around to the main entrance. The Sansevero carriage